The financial education portal Phroogal has spent the last year in beta. That will end this month when the company officially launches.

Phroogal, a New Jersey-based social platform for millennials to share financial questions and answers, now counts more than 10,000 registered users and has 14,000 answers posted — all with zero marketing outlay, co-founder Jason Vitug told Bank Innovation this weekend. Phroogal took home the trophy for best startup at the first-ever DEMOvation Challenge at Bank Innovation 2014.

That will change after the company emerges from beta with its 1.0 release in the coming weeks. Phroogal has partnered with a dozen credit unions and is in talks with two New York-area banks. Vitug said, “Our credit union partners have said they wanted to create their own Q&A space within Phroogal and version 1.0 will enable brands to build their own Q&A site within Phroogal, allowing their members to sift through a company’s FAQs, curated questions and the ability for users to ask brands questions directly.”

Phroogal was founded by two Cornell graduates, Jason Vitug and Max Martinez, in 2013. Martinez recently decided to move on to pursue other projects, Vitug said.

The most important thing Phroogal learned about its users during the 2014 beta period is that users are searching for financial information not just for the sake of learning, but are “looking for product solutions,” Vitug said. Phroogal is consequently planning to add product recommendations as a potential monetization play down the line. Here’s how Vitug explained it:

Our users are not searching for financial knowledge for the sake of learning but because they have a need. So naturally, what has happened is that as users’ trust has grown in the information we provide, they are asking us for product solutions. So there is an opportunity to connect search and knowledge with product recommendations. We’re road mapping a financial marketplace that easily integrates into our knowledge base in the future.

This aspect of Phroogal may be launched in beta in next spring, Vitug said.

Users of Phroogal, predominantly millennials, are equally mistrustful of banks and nonprofits, Vitug said. Banks are viewed as having ulterior motives to sell certain products, while nonprofit sites are seen as “outdated and dry essentially without relevancy.” Phroogal aims to take the middle path by connecting users in a social network-type setting millennials are comfortable with, and allow them to ask their own questions and get fresh answers.

“Millennials are choosing to make decisions based on news, recommendations, social and blogs,” Vitug said.

Last week, Phroogal was chosen as a finalist by IBM to be an IBM Watson partner. Winners will be announced in January at the Consumer Electronic Show.

The 2015 DEMOvation Challenge will take place March 3 in Seattle during Bank Innovation 2015. FinTech startups can apply for a 2015 demo slot here.